Review of “Gran Torino,” film, 2008. Written by Nick Scheck and Dave Johansson, Starring Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, and Christopher Carley, Directed by Clint Eastwood.
Stereotypes, racism, xenophobia, and patriotism all fight for a winning place in this film that contains several struggles. Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) plays the role of an American Veteran who has seen the Korean Conflict and now battles through conflicts each day at home.
Gran Torino is the name of a car, in fact in this case referring to a dark green 1972 automobile that is owned and prized by Walt, who helped build it in the Michigan Ford plant where he spent most of his life working. The car in this film turns out to be a metaphor, meaning very different things to all of the people who come into contact with it, from Walt to his granddaughter to Thao—the young neighbor who tries to steal it as part of his initiation into a gang.
The neighbors in this area are different from the ones Walt is used to—or was used to—working class Polish and other European working-class Whites who toiled in the Ford factory and in similar jobs. Now the neighborhood is peopled by several more recently-arrived Hmong families who Walt feels are taking over the houses that used to belong to his friends and neighbors.
The movie is about the past, and the present, and the future. And the plot moves us roughly through the gears of what was (Walt’s wife of 50 years has just died), to what is (Walt is alone and needs friends so badly but would never admit this), and what is going to occur (people get hurt, people get killed, life goes on in a new way).
The movie is about transitions, then, and the car itself represents a beautiful thing built by Americans who took pride in their jobs, in the past. Americans bought the cars built by their neighbors, and those patriots kept their lawns trimmed and their houses painted. Now, houses are rented or sold to new people who are very different from the ones who had lived there as united neighbors for decades. One of Walt’s sons has bought an Asian SUV, and Walt mentions, “Would it kill you to buy American?”
Things change. Walt’s sons have no allegiance to American car brands or to the American economy or to Americans. This is hard for Walt to understand. He does not know that this loss of pride is accepted and simply not important to a huge number of Americans.
It is hard for him to change. He does not want to change. But change is imminent, and it pursue him. Change comes for him—and for those around him also.
There are many transitions that go on within Walt, also, and those changes are at the core of the film. Walt had to deal with Asians when he was in Korea; now he has to deal with them living next door. Walt is a bigot. But he is a loveable one because he keeps doing surprising things—like saving the neighbor girl from being assaulted—and probably raped—by a group of young Blacks who grab her and her boyfriend as they walk down the street.
This scene, Walt stopping by with a gun to rescue the two young people, is a favorite on Youtube.
Walt stops to rescue Sue and her boyfriend.
Try as he might, Walt cannot get away from his new neighbors, and what’s worse, their culture. Walt is full of bigotry… and he harbors all sorts of stereotypes about everyone he has to deal with. He is plagued by the difficult personalities and weird differences of all the people around him: Catholic priest, Hmong families, young perhaps Irish-American “wigger” (played by his son Scott Eastwood) and many others, from Hmong gang members to Blacks to people who “always blame the Lutherans…”
One important scene involves the Hmong gang members who come to take Thao off for a meeting to work on initiating him into their club. There is a scuffle—Thao does not want to go and does not want to join up—and the group winds up on Walt’s prized front lawn.
Walt wants everyone off his lawn — he tells the gang members to leave.
“Get off my lawn” means so much more than a statement telling people to be careful of the grass growing there. It means, “Don’t tread on me” and “Don’t complicate my world” and “Go back to Asia.” It probably also means, “Don’t harm the neighbor boy,” though Walt would never admit this. He never admits it, in fact, for the rest of the movie.
However, the family living next door interprets Walt’s interference in the gang meeting as his attempt to save Thao, and they begin to honor him for his help. So do many other members of the Hmong community, by bringing flowers and food and ornate decorations for his home. These offerings are symbolic, of course, just as the car is.
Neighbors trying to give Walt chives for his garden.
Without giving away the rest of the story, as they say, I will end here by saying I think the film is under rated. There are many relevant and timely themes here, and I think Clint Eastwood is to be commended for making this, an important movie with big messages for Americans. I will always champion Gran Torino and continue to watch it, finding out more metaphors represented by the car, and seeing more transitions I had not seen in the last viewing.
I would refer teachers of culture, history, Asian cultures, literature, and social studies to this film also and tell them to look for what it could do for their students and also what the movie means to the educators themselves. Literature teachers will love counting up the car metaphors. For all teachers, this might be your favorite diamond-in-the-rough film for a while!